


The Field Where We Died

by Helen8462



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Adventure, Chronitons, Danger, F/M, Hero-Chakotay, Major Character Deaths under Temporal Circumstances, Someone's going to grow up a bit, Time Travel, Tough choices, archeology, not exactly rainbows and skittles, subtle J/C
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-21 23:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helen8462/pseuds/Helen8462
Summary: A field trip turns into a fight for their lives, and the life of the Captain, when Chakotay and Naomi stumble upon an ancient mystery.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheile (Cheile)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheile/gifts).



> This is for Cheile. She provided a prompt that I veered from when my muse delivered a truckload of chroniton particles, but I hope it still satisfies. Title/plot is in subtle homage to the X-files. I take no responsibility for temporal-plot induced headaches. In the words of K. Beyer, “just go with it.”

“How did they get those huge blocks up so high?” Naomi asked with her wide eyes fixed upwards.  In front of her was a gigantic assembly of carved granite which had been blanketed in sand and warmed by a blistering, though only holographic, sun.  She was standing slightly above Commander Chakotay on the first course of masonry at the bottom of the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

“Well, that’s still the subject of much debate,” Chakotay said, shielding his eyes from the brightness as he regarded her.  “How would you build this if you were in charge?”

“I’d use a transporter.  Or a tractor beam.”

“That’s a good idea for today, but they didn’t have that kind of technology five thousand years ago.  So how would you do it if you only had your hands and your brains to use?”

Naomi thought and then shrugged.  “I guess I’d get a lot of really strong people to pick them up.  Or maybe, I'd build a ramp.”  Ideas began to flood her mind and she got excited.  “Or I’d use some animals!  Or maybe I’d build a catapult and throw them up there or I’d flood the whole valley and float them up, or…. Uh.  I think that’s all the ideas I’ve got.”

Chakotay broke a grin at the girl’s exuberance.  “Your first idea - about using a lot of people and animals with a ramp - is pretty close to what archeologists think that they did.  But it would have taken a long, long time and a lot of resources.”

“So, this is archeology?” Naomi asked.  She sat down on the granite slab and swung her feet out below while absentmindedly pushing some sand around with her fingers.

Chakotay leaned on the stone that was her seat.  “This is part of archeology,” he replied.  “Archeologists study not just how structures were built, but why.  They investigate how those buildings, artifacts, tools and everything else were part of the culture of the people that lived in that time.  This pyramid was built to be a tomb for the most powerful leader of the region.  He was called the Pharaoh.”

“This is a tomb?” she asked incredulously.  “Why would anyone want to study a tomb and a bunch of dead people?  It’s kind of….”

“Kind of what?”

“Gross.  And what’s the point?  They’re already dead.”

“When we study the past Naomi, we can better understand where we came from.  And where we’re going.”

Naomi nodded and wiped her watery eyes.  The dry sand and bright light was beginning to sting.

“Speaking of where we are going,” Chakotay continued, “I was thinking of taking you on a little field trip.  That is, if you’re not afraid it will be too boring.”  He took the girl’s hand and helped her down off the stone. 

Naomi broke into a wide grin.  “Let’s go!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Every archaeologist needs a knapsack,” Chakotay said when Naomi and her mother joined him in the transporter room.  In his outstretched hand was a slightly smaller version of his own canvas bag.  His young travelling companion’s eyes widened and pulled her lips into a large smile.

“Thanks!" She felt the weight in her hands.  "What’s in it?”

“A sketch pad, some tools, a tricorder,” Chakotay replied.  Then he leaned down as if to tell her a secret.  “And snacks, because archeology is hungry work.”

Naomi happily swung the pack onto her back and took a moment to notice how differently the Commander looked when he wasn’t in uniform.  He wore lightweight cargo pants tied off with a leather belt.  They ended in dutiful hiking boots.  A khaki-colored jacket covered his brown tunic and Naomi thought if they were in Egypt he would have disappeared into the sand completely.

“You be good and listen to the Commander, Naomi,” Samantha Wildman told her daughter.  “And have fun.  I can’t wait to hear all about your adventure.”

“Thanks Mom!” Naomi replied, giving her a hug. 

“I’ll have her home for dinner,” Chakotay promised with a wink.  Together they stepped onto the transporter pad.

“Bye!” Naomi waved.  With a nod of the Commander’s head they both disappeared into the ether.

When her bearings had been returned to her, Naomi took in her surroundings.  They were in a rather barren place.  Dirt-brown, hardened ground and rocky terrain surrounded them. “I don’t understand,” she said to Chakotay.  “I thought there were supposed to be buildings down here.”

“Not buildings, Naomi, just the remains of a civilization.  To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what we’ll find.  That’s part of the adventure.”  A warm wind blew Naomi’s hair.  Chakotay retrieved his tricorder from his belt and began to scan. 

“Ah, this way."  He led her through a narrow pass of boulders that were easily three times taller than he was.

Chakotay continued leading the way for about one hundred meters until they came to a clearing.  He continually scanned for life signs and other dangers out of an abundance of caution.  By Voyager’s own reconnaissance there was not much left on this planet.  They surmised that the last civilization perished over five thousand years ago, presumably when a small moon collided with the surface.  The remaining moon in orbit was rich in deuterium ore, a lucky find for Voyager.  It was also lucky for Chakotay as he was itching to get off of the ship for a few hours with his eager student.

“Do you see that opening over there?” he asked, pointing across the large field of dirt.  “That’s what we’re after.  When we scanned from Voyager we detected bronze in those caverns, which indicates at least the beginning of a civilization.  Come on,” he urged, motioning her along.  She hurried behind him.

“This doesn’t look like anywhere I’d like to live,” Naomi remarked as they walked.  “It’s so dry, what did these people drink.”

“The surface looked a lot different when people lived here.  We think that when the moon broke into pieces and struck the surface it changed the geography of the landscape.  The dust and heat from the impact would have blanketed the atmosphere, killing off most of the plants and wildlife.”

“Just like what happened to the dinosaurs on Earth?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed.  “According to our readings, there is still a diversity of smaller life on the planet.  There is still water, and actually, a very large, new-growth forest not too far from here.  But no people.”  At this point in their walking, they had reached an opening to a cave.  “Come on, let’s take a look.”

Chakotay switched on a flashlight he had strapped to his wrist.  “You have one in your backpack,” he told Naomi and she quickly retrieved it.

Together they traversed the entrance, it wasn’t long before they began a downward descent into what felt like an underground cavern.  Soon, they came across markings on the wall.

“Look at these Naomi,” Chakotay said.  “Cave drawings.  People used to use this as a way to record events and communicate with each other.  These are pretty badly damaged because of their proximity to the entrance, but if we go in a bit farther I bet we’ll find some we can make sense of.”

So inward they went.

“There aren’t going to be bugs in here, are there?” Naomi asked, hesitantly following her guide into stuffy darkness. 

“Nothing too big, I promise.  If you see one I should phaser, just let me know," he joked.

Much to Naomi’s pleasure as they rounded the next corner they were greeted once again by daylight.  A large opening in the roof of the cave more than two stories above allowed full view of the sky.  The explorers switched off their flashlights.

Chakotay moved to a large section of art on one smooth wall.  “I’m going to make some sketches of this Naomi, why don’t you take a look around.  Just don’t go too far.  I’ll leave the comm-line open.”

“Okay!” she said and she scurried off.

Chakotay checked in with the girl every few minutes and after about a half an hour, he could hear her footsteps coming back. 

“Find anything interesting?”

“Boy, did I! These tunnels go on forever!  I found a lot more drawings and a pile of really shiny rocks.”  She held a marble-sized one out for him to see and he smiled in appreciation.  “How’s your sketch?”

“Almost done,” he said holding up the pad of paper.  “How’d I do?”

“Pretty good, but why not just record it with the tricorder?”

“This feels more real to me.  It gives me a chance to experience what the artist felt when he was making the marks.  It’s a personal preference, but I find it rather relaxing. You have a pad in your pack if you want to try.” 

Naomi swung the backpack off of her shoulders and retrieved her supplies.  Then she situated herself on the opposite wall and started to copy what she saw there.

“Commander,” she said as she finished her sketch.  “These look like children.”

Chakotay got up from his seated position and brushed himself off.

“I think you’re right.  See how they’re smaller than the other people standing behind them?”

“What are they doing?”

Chakotay tilted his head to the side.  “I believe I would interpret this is as an “end of days” drawing.  See this large object, it’s coming from the sky.  And you see below the plants and animals lying on their sides.”

“So this was drawn just before everyone died?” she asked with an upturned lip.

Chakotay nodded. “Probably.”

“That’s awful,” she replied, then a loud grumbling sound was heard coming from her stomach.  Naomi giggled.  “Oops!”

Chakotay went back to his pack and produced two wrapped sandwiches.  He tossed one to her.  “I told you this was hungry work.”

* * *

Half an hour later, when their lunch had been eaten, Naomi decided to go off on her own again.  This time, she traversed down a different passageway.  Not more than five minutes later she came running back to the Commander.   

“You _have_ to come see this!” Naomi said excitedly, bouncing up and down. 

Chakotay abandoned his sketchbook and other belongings as she led him down the passageway. 

“What did you find?”

“Pottery!  And tools and all kinds of stuff.  Come on!”

Apparently Chakotay wasn’t walking fast enough for Naomi’s taste because she stopped, grabbed his hand and pulled him along, pack swinging on her back.  She led him to the place where she had stopped and first observed a cache of artifacts, but this time, she went just a few steps farther. 

In an instant the world around them changed.  It was dizzying and they both fought to stay upright. After a moment, Naomi released her grip on the Commander’s hand.

“What just happened?” she asked shakily.

Chakotay had frozen in place.  “Don’t move,” he ordered, and she did as she was told.  He tapped the commbadge on his chest.  “Chakotay to Voyager.” 

The desultory chirp and silence that followed was deafening.

“Chakotay to Voyager, please respond.”

Naomi responded in turn, tapping her badge to no avail.  The young girl’s heart threatened to pound out of her chest.  Something was very wrong.

 _Chakotay still looks calm_ , Naomi thought.  _So I_ _’ll stay calm too_.  Like her companion, Naomi surveyed the area. The tunnel that they had been exploring was larger now and brighter than it had been.  With her first intake of breath she could taste a sweetness in the air, not at all like the musty dankness from just moments before.  The pottery shards and artifacts were gone, but in their place sat a wooden table.  Across its roughly-carved surface were bowls filled with bones and sweet-smelling oil.

“Do still have a tricorder in your bag?” Chakotay asked.  She quickly took the pack from her shoulder and rooted inside. 

“Here,” she replied holding it out to him.  “What happened?  Where are we?”

“I’m not sure.”

Chakotay scanned the room but didn’t dare move from the spot where they stood.  The tricorder beeped.

“There are people here,” Chakotay said, instinctively putting a hand down to his belt – gratefully he felt his phaser still in place.

“Come this way,” he motioned to her.  “Stay very close.” 

She did as he asked and followed him into a small, side chamber that was notably darker and completely empty.

As he swung the tricorder past Naomi it beeped wildly.  Her eyes widened in surprise.  “What?” she asked.  “Why am I making it alarm?”

That’s when Chakotay noticed a thin line of string, presumably made of animal gut, around her neck.  Dangling at the bottom was a pendant made of the same shiny stones she had shown him earlier.  He reached out to touch it.  “What’s this?”

Naomi’s face blushed.  “It’s a necklace.  I found it in the hallway leading to the room with the pottery.”  She put her head down.  “I’m sorry Commander, I wasn’t going to steal it.  I tried it on and then I saw the room with the artifacts and I was so excited I forgot to take it off.”

Chakotay shook his head.  “It’s fine Naomi, can I see it please?”

She removed the jewelry from around her neck and placed the weight of it in his hand.

He scanned it with a frown.  “This stone is highly charged with chroniton particles.”  Chakotay shut his tricorder and tugged on his ear in thought. 

“I have more of them in my bag,” she replied.  She opened the zipper to reveal another two dozen small stones.  Chakotay handed the ornament back to her and she placed it once again around her neck.  He made a few adjustments to his tricorder.

“Stay here,” Chakotay said.  “I’ll be right back.”

Naomi did as she was told.  She’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t frightened, but being with the Commander made her feel safe.  _He_ _’ll get us out of here,_ she thought. 

A minute later Chakotay returned.  “The area we just walked through is heavily dosed with chroniton radiation.  We probably shouldn’t stay in this cave for long.”

“Did we travel through time?”

"I’m not sure yet.  But we’re going to find out.”

Using his tricorder as a map, he led Naomi out a back exit of the caves and into an area of densely-packed forest.

“This wasn’t here before,” she said softly.  She looked up at the towering trees whose canopy blocked the view of the sky above.  Birds swooped low and free, other small animals scurried from underfoot.

Chakotay frowned. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re in the same place we were before, but I think….”  Chakotay held his tricorder up to the sky.  “Come with me this way.”

Chakotay took Naomi’s hand and helped her around the rocks that made up the side of a small hill.  They quickly reached the edge of the forest which was starkly delineated by a swift-moving river.  He took the opportunity of a clear view of the sky to gaze upward.

“You were right.  We’ve jumped in time.”  Chakotay pointed straight up.  “Look.”

Naomi did as she was told.  Overtaking an otherwise bright, blue sky was a gigantic moon.  It seemed so close Naomi thought if she reached up she could touch it.

“That wasn’t there before either,” she said, eyes wide.

“If I had to guess, I’d say this is the moon that crashed into the planet.”  He held the tricorder up to the sky and made some calculations.  "Or, will crash into the planet in about a thousand years. By my estimations, we’re roughly six millennia _before_ we were when we beamed down.”

Naomi’s eyes grew wide.  “Um.  How do we get back? Or is it forward?

“That’s a good question.”  Chakotay sat on a log and allowed himself a moment to think.  “The chroniton radiation inside the cave we came from might be the key.  If we try to walk through that same area again, we might be taken back.”

“You don’t sound very sure about that,” Naomi observed hesitantly.

“I’m not.”

She thought for a moment.  “You said there were other people here, could they help us?”

“Not likely, this is probably the civilization whose ruins we were examining.  If so, they’re not past the Bronze Age.  And I’m guessing we don’t exactly look like they do.  We need to try to avoid contact with them.”

“Prime directive?”

“Among other reasons.”

At that moment Chakotay’s tricorder began to beep.  “Someone’s approaching,” he said.  “Follow me.”

Chakotay crouched low and started to walk back to the exit of the cave.  Naomi followed close behind, but before they could get more than thirty paces they found themselves surrounded.

Eight tall and thickly built men with long hair and deep-set brows closed a circle around them. 

“Nice job with the tricorder,” Naomi quipped under her breath.

“Radiation interference,” Chakotay replied.  He stuffed the device into his waistband to conceal it. 

“My name is Chakotay,” he said, putting his open hands upward in a universal sign of surrender.  “We are here in peace.”

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

After what felt like an eternity - but was actually about an hour – Chakotay, Naomi and their eight armed escorts began to slow what had been a hurried pace. 

The men they had encountered appeared to be some kind of hunting party, and possibly the ones that had been tasked with maintaining the offerings in the cave.  They were young and obviously very strong, but they were not the leaders of a much larger community which lived deep in the forest. 

Chakotay could sense that the men were quite wary of their unexpected find.  He knew that their appearance were a big part of the native's concerns.  Though the Commander could have passed for a member of this race with very few cosmetic enhancements – a larger forehead, stronger cheekbones and a distinctive dark marking down the sides of the neck – Naomi’s forehead spikes were a dead giveaway that they did not belong.  Chakotay could only hope that her odd appearance would be overlooked as some sort of birth defect.

Communication with their escorts had been choppy at best – the universal translator had difficulty with the otherwise rudimentary language interspersed with clicks of the tongue - but Chakotay did manage to ascertain that he and Naomi were being brought back to be examined by the elders of the community.

While they walked, he was careful to pay close attention to the direction of the sun, major landmarks and turns through the dense woodland.  Sometime soon, he and Naomi would have to return to the cavern and attempt to cross back through the chroniton field.  He didn’t want to have to rely on the tricorder to find their way.  Unfortunately, they had left the river some time ago, so using that as a roadmap was out of the question. 

The densely packed forest through which they had been walking became suddenly sparse and Chakotay could now see why.  They had reached their destination.

Through the rustling of the wind, voices could be heard.  Singing and shouting and the laughter of children rang out.  Their voices were clear and pure, hindered only by the sound of babbling water. 

Naomi looked up at Chakotay, “I think we’re here,” she remarked. 

As fortune would have it, the silent appeal that Chakotay had been making to the spirits of this forest would be answered.  His words and intentions were understood well by the village elders.  They accepted him as a traveler from a faraway land and granted him permission to pass through.  They were also offered food and shelter for the night. 

* * *

Back on board Voyager, the crew was finishing up their mining operation.  A few more hours and they would be ready to resume course for home.

Ensign Wildman came up beside Janeway near the engineering console, a concerned look on her face.  “Captain?” she asked.

Janeway turned to the young woman.  “Yes, Ensign?”

“I’m sorry to bother you ma’am, but… well, Commander Chakotay was supposed to be back with Naomi an hour ago, and they haven’t reported in.”

Janeway furrowed her brow.  It wasn’t like Chakotay to be late.  The fact that he had Naomi in his charge made his tardiness even more suspicious.  She tapped her commbadge.  “Janeway to Commander Chakotay.”

The hail was met with an uneasy silence.  Most attention on the bridge now resided on her.

“Voyager to Chakotay, Chakotay please respond.”

She refused to meet the young mother’s eyes as she walked purposefully toward the Ops station.  “Harry, see if you can locate Chakotay and Naomi on the planet.”

She and Samantha watched as Ensign Kim tapped his console and then looked up.  “They’re not there,” he said with a questioning look.  “I don’t understand….”

“Where could they have gone?” Samantha asked, fear quietly seeping into her voice.

Janeway put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

“Tuvok,” she said, meeting her security officer’s eyes.  She held up two fingers silently as an order for additional backup.  With an entirely separate glance and slight shake of her head, she addressed his unspoken warning that this many senior officers should not be off the ship at one.  With a child’s life at stake, Tuvok new better than to protest.

“Harry, you’re with me.  Tom, you have the bridge.  Work with Seven and scan for any other ships in the area or anywhere off of the planet they could have disappeared to.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Tom replied and he headed for the center seat.

“Captain?” Samantha began, unsure of how to ask – no, demand – that she be allowed to come with them.

“You’re coming too,” Janeway assured with a pat on the woman’s shoulder, and then she led her group briskly to the turbolift.

* * *

By late afternoon, Naomi had settled in nicely with a group of children who were playing by the bank of the river.  She was relieved to note that Chakotay was never out of sight.  While she played, he remained on the hillside talking with the other adults, but his attention always seemed to be on her when she turned back to check.   

The children led her to a calmer section of water where a pool had formed.  The older boys showed her how to skip stones while a group of girls floated model-sized rafts attached to strings.  For a while, Naomi almost forgot the dire situation she was in.  She enjoyed her time with the other children and was grateful that Chakotay hadn’t wanted to head back to the cave immediately.  It was so very rare that she got to interact with others her own age.  In fact, she could count on one hand the number of times she had done so.  The shore leaves were always so short.  And sometimes, there weren’t any children at all to be played with. 

Unlike Naomi, who seemed to have no problems communicating with her counterparts, Chakotay found it difficult at best to make conversation with the other supervising adults by the river’s edge. The individuals who protected the children had rudimentary language, and were not nearly as refined as the village elders.  There was one woman – Chakotay had identified her as a nanny - that had taken an interest in him.  He found her easier to understand and more accepting than the rest.

From her, Chakotay learned that in this culture the parents had the duty to work to support their young.  The fathers hunted and the mothers wove cloth and prepared food.  The unbound – a term that he took to mean unmarried or without children – were left to care for the youngsters.  Indeed, a village raised these youth.

When she prodded Chakotay about his situation, the woman was slightly taken aback at the prospect of a single man raising a child. 

“Girl child, yours?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Chakotay lied.  He wasn’t about to get into the niceties of their relationship and for all intents and purposes he was her guardian.

“No woman guide?  No elders?” she asked, pointing to Naomi.

“Woman guide is not here,” he replied.  “Elders and friends are far away.  We’re trying to get back to them.”

The young woman nodded.  “Hard.  No woman guide, no elders.”

Chakotay smiled softly.  “We’re okay.  Brave girl.”

The woman smiled back at him and squeezed his shoulder.  “Strong man.”

* * *

Captain Janeway and her search and rescue team landed in an outcropping of dusty, red rock.  Janeway, at the front of the pack, followed her tricorder and led her team toward the same cavern where Chakotay and Naomi had been exploring earlier in the day.  The sun had begun to slide ever-so-slightly down toward the horizon and Janeway was respectful of the need to work quickly or lose their remaining light.

Soon enough, the team approached the mouth of the cave.  “They went this way, Captain,” Harry reported and Janeway nodded in agreement.  With their flashlights clicked on, they made their way inside. 

Sweeping beams left trails of illumination on the cave walls.  Tuvok was the first to notice rudimentary pictographs.  He motioned to them silently and the pack continued past. 

Rounding the next corner, the team was met by natural light.  Most peered up to see the opening in the top of the cavern. 

“Look!” Samantha said suddenly and she led the others to a wall with more drawings.  On the floor were Chakotay’s belongings.  “This was the pack Chakotay left with this morning,” she said, picking it up.  Scattered on the ground were his sketches. 

“Let’s split up,” Janeway ordered.  “Harry, Tuvok, Dalton, you go down that corridor.  We’ll go the other way and meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

Nods all around and the teams were on the move.  A short time later, everyone regrouped but with precious little information to share.  “We located a room containing pottery shards and other artifacts,” Tuvok reported.  “There were also footprints and evidence that the ground had been recently traversed, but they terminated just before the entrance to the chamber.  Tricorder readings in the cavern appear to be distorted by radiation.”

“We didn’t find anything in the other direction,” Janeway reported, rubbing her forehead.  “A few footprints, they might have been Naomi’s but they turned around and led us back here.  We’ve had the same tricorder interference as you.” 

While the teams hashed out possibilities, Samantha broke off and went to review what was left of Chakotay’s pack.  “It looks like they had lunch,” she said quietly.  “He said he was bringing food with them, but it’s not here and his water bottle is empty.”

Samantha moved to pick up one of the drawings.  Warily she eyed it, and then looked to the wall above, presumably the one he had been sketching.  Figures stood around flames, animal heads and sun rays came down depicting crops that grew.  But something was different. 

“Captain, look at this.”

Janeway moved away from the others.  “What is it Ensign?”

“Chakotay’s drawing, it’s different than what’s on the wall.”

The Captain took the drawing from her hand.  “You see there?” the Ensign began, pointing.  “Chakotay’s sketch shows a group of people lined up, laying prone on the ground.”

“It looks like a cemetery,” Janeway commented.

“But compare it to the wall,” Samantha ran her finger over two figures that replaced those bodies in the same depiction. 

“It’s a man and a child,” Janeway said, scrunching her eyebrows. “They’ve got other figures following behind them through a door of some kind.  Now why would Chakotay sketch the rest of this artwork so accurately and get this part wrong?”

“Captain?” Harry called from across the room.  “You’d better have a look at this one too.”

Hidden in the corner of an opposite wall was a large drawing.  Contained within an iridescently adorned oval, was an unmistakable set of lines.  Janeway looked at the wall, processed what she saw there, and then returned her glare to Tuvok for confirmation.  The security chief held up his tricorder, scanned the wall and then closed it again.

“It would appear, Captain, that someone drew the Commander’s tattoo on this wall – approximately three-thousand years ago.”

* * *

Naomi’s model raft – consisting of sticks tied with simple string – was complete.  She was proud of her little boat and was excited to see what it could do.  As she bent down to put it in the water, her necklace freed itself from under her shirt.  One of the girls saw it first. 

“Pretty,” the girl told her.

Suddenly, Naomi had an idea.  “More!” she replied.  Then she handed her raft to the girl and ran up the hillside to her pack.  She regarded Chakotay with a smile then quickly removed the twenty-odd, shimmering marbles and headed back down to distribute them to her new friends.  Naomi was now the most popular girl in town.

After another hour, the sun began slide ever closer to the horizon.  Chakotay surveyed his surroundings again.  It was clear that the men of the hunting group were still very wary of the new visitors.  They stood close together, whispering and staring at him, occasionally pointing at Naomi.  He couldn’t be sure of their intentions and so, he decided that despite the offer of a hut in the village, he would feel safer on the outskirts, in their own dwelling.

“It’s getting late in the day,” Chakotay told Naomi when the children began to disperse.  “We need to make a place to sleep tonight.  We’ll return for the evening meal once we’re done.  Early tomorrow morning, we’ll make the hike back to the cave.”

Naomi agreed and followed him to an outcropping of rocks near the boundary of the village.  “Let’s use these boulders as protection from the wind.”  What he didn’t tell her was that it would also provide protection from the potential threat of their hosts.

“Come on, I’ll teach you how to build a lean-to.”

* * *

“According to my investigation, Captain, the surface is abundant with pockets of chroniton radiation.”  Seven worked the panel in front of her.

“Why didn’t we detect it before?” Janeway returned her eyes to the large Astrometrics viewscreen.

“We weren’t looking for it,” Harry responded.

“The levels are significantly low.  Each pocket is no more than three meters across. I increased sensor gain by nearly two-hundred percent detect them.”  Seven brought up a topographical map of the planet’s surface.  Highlighted in yellow dots were hundreds, if not thousands of areas containing chroniton radiation.

“The radiation is in doses small enough not to cause a health threat.  However, I believe that some of these pockets could contain enough radiation to create a brief temporal rift.”

“So, you’re saying that Chakotay and Naomi disappeared into another time?”

“Yes, and that’s not all,” Harry said. “We’ve also detected other humanoid lifesigns on the planet.  There’s a civilization down there that definitely wasn’t around a day ago.”

Janeway shook her head.  Temporal circumstances always gave her a headache and this was no exception.  Clearly someone had been toying with the timeline of this entire planet.  “Let’s deal with the issue of our missing people first.”

Ensign Wildman, who had been completely silent up until this point, finally found her voice.  “How do we get them back?”

“First, we have to figure out where and when they went,” Harry replied.  “Likely they slipped through the pocket at the end of the hallway leading to the chamber with all of the artifacts, since that’s where their footprints ended.”

“We’ve all walked through that area numerous times and none of us disappeared,” Ensign Wildman observed.

“That is correct,” Seven replied.

“Why not?” asked Janeway.

“I believe that one, or both of them had something in their possession to amplify the effect of the chroniton field.”

Tuvok raised an eyebrow.  “Around the drawing depicting Commander Chakotay’s tattoo, there were twenty-two small spheres drawn and inlaid with an ornamental iridescent material.  And then again, in the modified cave art, we saw the figures surrounded by iridescent spheres.  Those spheres could be a representation of such an object, or objects.”

“That’s an interesting theory,” Janeway agreed.  “Provided its true, where do we find more?”

* * *

“Did they teach you this at the Academy?” Naomi asked, taking a bundle of sticks from Chakotay. She began to carefully lay them against the center post he had settled into the crook of one of the giant rocks.

“No.  Though we did have some survival training at the Academy.  I learned most of what I know about being in nature from my father and the others in my tribe.”

“I don’t know my dad, but according to my mom he’s not the outdoorsy type.”

“Everyone’s parents have different things to teach them, different points of view.  Where I grew up, they used to say that it takes a village to raise a child.  That means, children need to be exposed to lots of different ideas and skills to become well-rounded people - good members of society.”

Chakotay handed another few twigs to the girl.  “You’ve got the hang of this.  Keep laying them down the line then we’ll start the other side,” he instructed her. 

Naomi did as she was told.  “I guess Voyager is my village.”

“Yes indeed.  And there are enough differing viewpoints and collective knowledge onboard to keep you busy for a lifetime,” he smiled.  “When we get home, you’ll be the most well-rounded kid in the Alpha Quadrant.”

"Not everyone is as willing to spend time with me, or teach me things as you are," she said.  Then she looked at him.  "Do you think you'll ever have kids, Chakotay?"

He paused in his gathering of sticks.  "I'm not sure if that's in the cards for me, Naomi.  If the circumstances were right, I'd like to.  Someday."

"You'd do a really good job at it."

He laughed softly.  "Your mother may argue that point."

“Oh, this?  It doesn't matter," she said with a shrug.  "I'm happy you brought me on this trip, Chakotay.  Even if it didn’t end up how we planned, I’m glad we came.  And I know you’ll get us home.”

* * *

Janeway stood from her place at the conference room table.  “Alright.  So we’ve got a plan, now it’s time to execute it.”

“Tom and Tuvok, you’ll each take a team to the surface and continue scanning for more ‘chroniton activators’.   It’s getting dark down there.  Be safe, travel together and avoid those pockets just in case.  Report back here in two hours.”  The two men nodded and then headed on their way. 

Janeway turned her attention to the others.  “Seven, B’Elanna and Harry, let’s go see about creating a chroniton emitter.”

As the remaining members of the room filed out, Janeway fell in step behind Ensign Wildman.  “How are you holding up?” Janeway asked, putting a hand on the Ensign’s shoulder. 

“I’ve been better.”

Janeway offered her a faint smile.  “I know words won’t do much in a time like this.  But there is no one I trust more than Commander Chakotay.  I’d trust him to walk through fire with my own child if I had one.  He _will_ keep your daughter safe until we get them back home.”

* * *

When their lean-to had been completed, Chakotay and Naomi headed back to the village to join the others for their evening meal.  Before them was presented a veritable feast.  Birds and small game had been cooked over an open fire.  Hearty root vegetables and grains were roasted as well as made into thick, chewy breads.  Later in the evening, a crisp-tasting berry drink, sweetened with nectar, was welcome refreshment. 

Bellies full and weary from the events of the day, Chakotay noticed that his young charge could barely keep her eyes open.  He said a few parting words to the elders, accepted kindly their offer of a soft, woven blanket, and then scooped her up in his arms. 

Chakotay set Naomi down onto the bed of grass they had made under the branches of the triangular lean-to.  He covered her with the blanket and then went to the other side of their temporary structure.  Lying down, he regarded the gigantic moon in his view from between the sticks.  It was brightly illuminated and he realized that nighttime on this planet would not get to be very dark at all.  It was mildly disconcerting not to be able to see more than a few stars along the horizon.

Chakotay heard Naomi move around under her blanket and sat up to make sure she was alright.  She hugged the covering tight then inched down the ground to be closer to him. 

“Chakotay?” Naomi asked softly.

“Yes?”

“Do you ever get scared?”

Chakotay sighed and looked up at the sky.  “Yes, I get scared Naomi.   Everyone does from time to time.”

“Everyone?” she asked incredulously sitting up a bit to look at him. 

“Mm hm.”

“Even Captain Janeway?”

Chakotay broke a smile at the girl’s question.  “Yes, she gets scared too.”

Naomi sighed and laid back down, shifting a bit closer under his arm.  “What scares you?” she asked.

He thought a moment.  “I’m afraid when the people I care about are in danger,” he replied.  “Especially when I can’t be there to help them.  But, I try to remember that everything in this life happens for a reason.  And there’s always something good to come out of even the worst situation.”

“I bet my mom is scared,” Naomi said softly.

“I’m sure she’s worried about you, and she’s working with the others to bring us back.”

She nodded faintly.  Chakotay could hear the young girl’s breathing relax as she started to doze once more, eyes closing. 

“I’m glad you’re with me,” were her final words before falling into slumber.

“So am I, Naomi.  So am I.”

* * *

At 0535 hours, after having worked through the night, Captain Janeway ran a tired hand through her hair.  “I think we’ve finally got it,” she said.  With a nod, B’Elanna concurred.  “This should do it,” she said, regarding the blinking, metallic sphere on the lab table in front of her.

Seven picked up the baseball-sized object.  “We will require further testing on the planet’s surface.”

“Agreed,” the Captain concurred.  “But I need a cup of coffee first and from the looks of it, you could all use a break too.  Let’s reconvene in an hour then head down.  We’ll run a few tests on the chroniton pockets, send a probe through, and if all goes well we’ll have them back by lunch.”  Janeway finished her thought with an encouraging glance to a very fatigued Samantha Wildman.

Samantha mustered a smile and nodded, though she wasn’t entirely convinced it would be so easy.

* * *

Chakotay awoke from his light slumber to the sound of voices from the village.  Careful not to rouse Naomi he crawled toward the open end of the lean-to. 

From there he could make out words like ‘gone’ and ‘children’ and ‘fault’ and ‘stranger’.  Chakotay didn’t like the sound of any of those words.  His senses went on immediate red alert. 

Through the trees he heard footsteps and he readied himself for an attack.  Instead he was met with an unexpected visitor.  The young woman caregiver he had struck up a conversation with earlier in the day snuck around the side of his abode.

“You. Leave!” she told him in a franticly hushed voice.  “Now!  Not safe.”

“Why not?” Chakotay asked.  “What happened?”

“Children gone.  Morning walk.  All gone.”

Chakotay shook his head.  “I don’t understand,” he replied.  “What does that have to do with us?”

“Blame.  You,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest.  As she did, he could hear angry voices growing louder, footsteps approaching.

Chakotay quickly rustled Naomi from her sleep.  If it had been just him, he would have stayed to face the accusations, but there was no way he would risk the girl’s safety.  He decided it best to flee while they had a head start and the cover of morning fog.

“We have to go, now,” he told Naomi.  Still bleary eyed from sleep, she wiped her eyes. 

For fifteen minutes the duo ran through dense mist, winding through the trees and traversing pitfalls and hills.  Chakotay could tell that the girl was quickly growing tired, she was struggling to keep up the pace that would be needed if they hoped to make it to the cave.  Even once they did make it, Chakotay was skeptical of whether or not simply walking through the chroniton field would allow them to return to their time. 

“Stop here for a minute,” Chakotay said as he helped Naomi down a small embankment.  

“You haven’t told me yet why we’re running,” Naomi said, putting her head low to catch her breath.

“Something happened to those children you were playing with yesterday.  The nanny I was talking to said that they disappeared on their morning walk.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“Primitive cultures are usually very superstitious.  They probably connected our sudden arrival with the disappearances and jumped to conclusions.”

“But we didn’t do anything to those kids.  Our time jumping wasn’t contagious, was it?”

“No, nothing we did caused them to –“

As he said the words, something clicked in the back of Chakotay’s mind. The chroniton fields. The children.  The marbles he watched her hand out.  Chakotay had never prided himself a man of science, but in that moment everything made sense. 

“Are you still wearing that necklace?” he asked her. 

She put a hand on the collar of her shirt and felt the lump under the fabric.  “Yes, why?”

“I’ll explain later.  We only have a little further back to the cavern.  Are you ready to keep going?”

Naomi nodded and they were on their way again, cutting a path through the dense forest, Chakotay with his tricorder out front. 

“There’s another pocket of chroniton radiation ahead,” he told her.  “We should go around it.”  It was the seventh such pocket they had cause to avoid and the frequency seemed to be increasing as they continued closer to the area of the cave.

Even with the blood pounding through his ears, Chakotay could hear the hunting party gaining on them. After another minute of running the men had caught sight of the duo and were shouting.  A weapon, thrown at them, came next. 

“Dammit,” Chakotay swore under his breath.  “Naomi, we’re not going to make it to the cavern.”

“What….what do we….do?” she asked between pants of breath.  Naomi stumbled on a fallen log and recovered herself quickly to keep going.

Chakotay stole a quick glance to his tricorder and then stowed it on his belt as he ran.  The men were so close now he was afraid one of them would grab Naomi at the next turn. 

From behind, Naomi felt herself being lifted off the ground.  “Hey!” she shouted.   Chakotay’s strong arms wrapped around her as he dove through a gap in the trees.


	4. Chapter 4

Chakotay and Naomi fell in tandem to the ground.  Dirt laced with gravel and sticks abraded their knees.  The Commander quickly rose to his feet then took Naomi by the hand to pull her up.

“We’ve jumped again,” Chakotay said, catching glances of his surroundings.  They were in what appeared to be very different kind of small village.  The forest was gone and now thatched-roof houses dotted along a dirt path.  The only vegetation to be found was low, patchy scrub grass.  The view of the sky was clear and no longer held a gigantic moon.

He took her by the arm and pulled her in between two of the stick-built homes.  “Until we figure out where and when we are, we need to stay away from people.  Understand?”

Naomi nodded her head.  Chakotay pulled the tricorder out from the waistband of his pants. He started to scan.  “These readings are obscured by radiation again,” he confirmed with a frown.  “Wait a minute…”

“What is it?” Naomi asked, trying to peek at his display.

“I’m getting a comm signal.”  The Commander snaked a hand under his jacket and tapped his badge.  “Chakotay to Voyager, come in Voyager.”

There was no answer. 

“Chakotay to any Starfleet personnel, please respond.”

After a moment his badge chirped and crackled.  Through the interference he swore he heard the name “Janeway.”

Naomi’s eyes grew wide.  “That was the Captain!”

Chakotay nodded.  He pushed indicators on the tricorder and motioned for Naomi to follow him.  “Keep your head down,” he told her, and he concealed the device in the crook of his elbow as he led her through the heavily beaten path. 

The first residents they observed were clothed in shades of tan and brown.  Chakotay thought it lucky that they would blend in pretty well here, as long as no one caught sight of Naomi’s forehead.  He also noticed that every person he passed harbored a sharp blade on their belt. Somewhere in the distance he heard the rumblings of a disagreement erupt into shouts of anger.  Fighting spilled out from behind one of the dwellings into the street. 

Chakotay put his arm around the girls shoulder.  “We need to keep moving,” he remarked to her under his breath.  Naomi inched closer.

Appearing from out of nowhere an inebriated man waved a heavy, pewter mug at Chakotay and grabbed Naomi by the arm.  She squeaked at the sudden, unwarranted contact.

“This one for sale?  I’ll take ‘er off your hands!” The man shouted.  The smell of alcohol was heavy on his breath. 

Chakotay grabbed the man by the wrist of the hand he had placed on the girl.  In a swift move the man was spun around with his back against Chakotay’s chest.  He was thoroughly restrained from making any kind of movement.   “That won’t be necessary,” Chakotay told the man firmly, jerking his hold to make a point.  The mug clanked to the ground beside them and spilled.

Naomi froze in place.

“Aw come on, she got such nice long hair.  What?  The nits didn’t get ‘er yet?”  Chakotay tightened his grip as the man tried to pull away.  “Hey, what’s wrong with ‘er face?” the man asked, looking more closely at the frightened girl in front of him.  “She looks like….”  The man squinted his drunken eyes.  “Naw, she couldn’t be.”

Chakotay watched warily as a few people had begun to peer out of their homes. 

The man licked his lips.  “I’ll pay top marks for ‘er.  More than you’re gonna get anywheres else with those….things on ‘er head.”

“I’m telling you again, she’s not for sale.” Aware of the urgency to resolve the matter without a scene, Chakotay lowered his voice and hissed in the man’s ear.  “I’m going to let you go now, and I want you to walk away.”

“What if I done wanta?  If she not for sale maybe I’ll just take ‘er.”

“If you don’t walk away from me when I let you go, I _will_ kill you where you stand,” Chakotay said, his voice and his resolve unwavering.  The man grunted his acquiesce.

Chakotay slowly released the man’s arm and in one swift movement disarmed the blade from the would-be attacker’s belt.  He gave him a shove, just hard enough for the man to stumble in his drunkenness and land with a splat on the ground.

The Commander placed a hand on Naomi’s back, turned them both and walked briskly out of sight.  They paced in purposeful, discrete silence for a time until he was sure there were no prying eyes around.  Then he retrieved his tricorder.

“Would you really have killed that man?” Naomi asked tentatively as they rounded a corner behind a long row-house structure.

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have come to that,” Chakotay replied, trying to wave the girl off of her disturbing train of thought.  He was also trying to disperse his own ruminations of what that man would have done with Naomi.  The Commander’s eyes remained dead-set on the tricorder.

“But you’ve killed before.  My mom says that the Maquis did a lot of killing.”

Chakotay slowed his steps and came to a pause behind the building.  He took a moment to gather his thoughts.  The girl deserved an honest answer.

“I have,” he confessed. Then he knelt down before her and looked her in the eyes.  “I’ve killed for the Maquis and for Starfleet.  In my life I’ve done a lot of things that I don’t intend to do again if I can help it.  But, everything I did, I did because I felt like it was the right thing to do at the time.  Keeping you safe is no different.  I will do absolutely _anything_ I have to, to make sure you make it home.  Do you understand that?”

Naomi nodded and Chakotay rose from his spot on the ground.  They began walking once again.  “I’d like to hear more about the Maquis.  My mom doesn’t like to talk about it,” she told him.

“When we’re back, I’ll answer any question you ask me.  But for right now, we have a mission we need to complete and I think we’ve just reached the next step.  The signal we’re looking for is coming from over here.”

The duo had reached the far corner of the village.  Before them was the largest structure they had seen yet.  It was a squat, square building that had the look of a barn.  It also had a stone foundation and a thickly thatched roof.  As they approached, Chakotay and Naomi were overwhelmed with the stench of animals.

“I’m getting one human lifesign,” he told Naomi.  He neglected to also inform her that the aforementioned lifesign was very weak.  They entered through a rear door to the structure.  Poultry birds and other small mammals roamed behind crude wooden fences within the large interior arena.  Following his tricorder, they headed for a row of enclosed stalls along the far wall.  Naomi instinctively reached for Chakotay’s hand and as he took it, he offered her a reassuring smile.  He slowly swung open the wooden gate.

Chakotay recoiled at the sight before him and Naomi covered her mouth with her hands.  “Oh my God, Kathryn,” he gasped.

Leaning against the back wall, in a pile of hay, was his captain.  She was pale, the hand over her side was covered in crimson blood, her uniform, soaked through.

Chakotay let go of Naomi’s grip.  “Stay here,” he told her.  The girl nodded and remained frozen at the end of the stall.

Quickly, he stepped to Kathryn’s side.  He grabbed a towel from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around his hand.

“What happened?  How did you get here?” he asked, trying to access her condition.

“It’s a long story,” she said with a faint smile. “I’m glad to see you.”

Chakotay looked down again at her wound, gently moved her hand and applied pressure.  She winced and growled at the contact. 

“We have to get help, there must be a doctor somewhere,” he said urgently.

Janeway shook her head.  “There’s not enough time.”

Panic began to seep into his voice.  “I don’t have any supplies, I can’t -”

“Chakotay.  Listen to me,” Janeway said mustering strength.  “You have less than eight hours to get back.”

Chakotay looked at her with wide eyes.  “What?”

“We may be _in_ the past, but I’m from your future,” she said.  “If you get home before I leave, this won’t happen.”

Chakotay shook his head.  “I don’t understand.”

“This chroniton situation has created not just the ability to move through time, but it’s also split our timeline.  Just trust me Chakotay.  You have to keep going.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’ve been moving through the portals with charged stones,” she said, carefully avoiding the urge to watch as he attempted to tend to her wound.  “I used artificial means to pass through but it wasn’t the same result.  I met up with Chakotay and Naomi already, later versions of you.  We ended up in the middle of a war.”  She winced again and leaned her head forward onto his shoulder for a moment.  “You have to get back before…”

“Before what?” 

“Before I leave, and you’re both killed.”

Chakotay ran a stressed hand over his face.  “How is this possible?”

She seized forward with a wave of nausea and ground her head lower into his chest.  Once she had steadied herself, she pulled back.  “Our only chance is for you to get home before I leave to come rescue you.  If you do, things should make themselves right again.”   

Janeway dug tenderly behind her back and retrieved a tricorder. “This was from the other Chakotay.  It has what you need to find the portal that will get you home. I recorded everything in here.  I wasn’t sure I’d last… I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“I can’t just leave you here.”

“I’m not your Kathryn…. The timeline has already changed….” Janeway’s voice stuttered and she let out a wet, straining cough.  “If you set this right….” She coughed again and choked.  A thin line of red dripped from her mouth and her eyes began to cloud. 

From behind him, Chakotay could hear Naomi sniffling back tears.  He imagined she was trembling.  He had to get the girl out of there.

“I destroyed my chroniton emitter.  And my phaser,” she told him in a whisper.  Then she moved to detach her commbadge and placed it in Chakotay’s hand.  “Take this too.”

As he regarded the small object, a sickening thought sunk into his gut.  “Kathryn,” he said softly.  “I have a phaser.”

She sighed and nodded her head at what he was suggesting.  “If you set it to stun…”

Vestiges of memories long since repressed moved through Chakotay’s mind like floodwater.  Specific recollections still haunted him – how many times had he been forced to end the lives of his Maquis brothers, too far gone, so alone?  He swallowed back the horrible feeling and reminded himself that he still had the power to prevent this situation from ever happening.

“You won’t wake up,” he promised.

Chakotay bent low and whispered something into the Captain’s ear that Naomi couldn’t make out.  Janeway’s response was a weak smile and what may have been a small caress on his cheek.  Then he rose, took Naomi with a hand on her shoulder and moved her out of view.  Naomi squeezed her eyes shut tight and covered her ears.  A few moments later, she felt his warm hand on her arm once again. 

Chakotay led them out of the barn and didn’t dare look back to the place where he had left his captain dying - alone - in an animal’s filthy bed. 

As the door shut behind them, Naomi stopped.  “We’re really just going to leave her?” 

 “We have to.  Trust me, this is going to turn out okay and the Captain will be fine.”  Naomi looked at him with unbelieving eyes.  “We shouldn’t abandon her.  It’s wrong.”

For a moment Chakotay was afraid that she would refuse to follow him.

“Naomi,” he said, kneeling down to her level.  “I would never, ever do anything to jeopardize her life.”  As the words fell, he hoped she understood just how deeply he meant them.  

“Because you’re her first officer?”

Chakotay bowed his head for the confession.  “Because I love her.  But what she told me is true.  We have to keep moving, if we get back before she leaves, then this will never occur.”

Naomi nodded and took up the Commander’s hand again but before she moved she said, “If you love her, then you should have told her.”

Chakotay closed his eyes briefly, released a breath and relished in the simple kindness of the girl’s suggestion.   “She already knows.”

* * *

Once outside the barn, Chakotay took a moment to gather his thoughts. 

“What did the Captain mean when she said that the rocks we were carrying were causing us to travel through time?” he heard the girl ask.

“From what I can understand, the chroniton particles in the marbles, including the one in your necklace, magnify the pockets of radiation we’ve been stumbling across.” He pointed to the sky which no longer housed a giant satellite.  “The moon that impacted the surface may have been the source.  Either way, something created these rips in time.  But without a way to bring the charge into alignment they won’t take you anywhere.  You could walk through them all day and never even know they’re there.”

“So this whole thing is my fault?” Naomi asked, anger seeping into her voice.

“No, it’s not your fault.  It was an accident.”

“No it wasn’t,” she realized, eyeing him warily.  “If I hadn’t picked up those stones, worn that necklace, we never would have been able to activate that… that gateway.  We wouldn’t be stuck here.”

“We’re not stuck Naomi, we’re going to find a way back.  And now we know that Captain Janeway and the others are figuring out a way to help.”

“But we have a deadline.  What if we can’t make it back in time?  What if you get hurt or I get hurt?” Naomi’s voice began to crack as tears welled up in her eyes.  “Or what if we get separated?  Or if there’s just no way to go back at all?”

Chakotay put his arms around the girl and hugged her close.  “Naomi, you have to trust me when I tell you, we _will_ find a way home.  Everything _will_ turn out fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s called faith, Naomi.  I have faith in us.  I trust my instincts and I trust you.  But, we have to keep clear heads.  Okay?”

Chakotay used his sleeve to wipe away the girl’s tears.  She snuffled and sniffled and composed herself in short time.  “I’m sorry.  I….. I’m just scared.”

“It’s okay to be scared, but we do have to keep moving.”

“I understand,” she replied.  “Just please, don’t get too far from me.”

* * *

Chakotay had hoped amongst hope that the tricorder he had been gifted would be a map for a quick trip home.  As it was, things would be significantly more difficult.

When the two travelers reached the coordinates of the correct gateway, they found it was inaccessible. In this point in time, the cavern they were searching for had been turned into a prison.  A very dirty, rank-smelling, well-guarded prison.  And situated just outside the entrance were a gallows being prepared for the day’s first performance.

A performance he was not about to allow his young charge to observe.

Thinking quickly, Chakotay went with Plan B.  “We’re going to have to find another gateway, go through it, and hope that in that time the cavern will be more accessible,” he told her. 

Naomi nodded.

“There should be another one this way,” Chakotay said.  They ducked through the side streets once more and the tricorder beeped with ever intensifying urgency. 

“Hey!  You!”  Chakotay heard a familiar, loud voice boom.  He spun on his heels and instinctively wrapped his arm around Naomi, pulling her to his legs.  “The one with ‘the savior’.”  Naomi looked up at Chakotay with wide-eyed confusion.

The drunken man from earlier was charging towards him, brandishing a shiny new knife.  “Give me the girl,” the man demanded.  “She’s deserves to be revered in the proper manner.” 

Two other men quickly stepped to flank the would-be attacker, their eyes shiny and faces eager for a fight.

“Time to go,” Chakotay said softly.  With two steps to the side, the pair disappeared into the ether once again.


	5. Chapter 5

“That’s getting easier to stomach,” Naomi remarked once the dizziness of their most recent time travel abated. 

Chakotay agreed and both were relieved to realize that they were once again in an open space, free from structures and people.  The wild grass they stood in was as high as Naomi’s knees and it waved against a chilled wind.

“What did those men mean, that I was their savior?” Naomi asked while Chakotay gained his bearings.

“I can’t be sure.  But I think that when you handed out those chroniton stones to the children they must have accidentally travelled into the future.  It’s the only thing that explains how there is a culture thriving when what we had originally encountered on the surface was so dead.”

“We created a whole civilization?” she asked in awe.

“I wouldn’t say created.  Just…. redirected.  And I’m not entirely sure that’s what happened.  We’ll know more when we get back to Voyager.”

Naomi redirected her attention to their surroundings.  “So, when are we now?” she asked.  She instinctively wrapped her arms tighter around her as the next breeze swept through.  This was the coldest she’d been yet.

Chakotay reviewed his tricorder.  “We’re very far in the past,” he informed her.  “About forty-five hundred years before the lunar impact.”

“Wait, that’s almost…. ten thousand years before Voyager,” she realized.  Naomi looked up to the sky.  The moon was visible, but not nearly as close as it had been after their initial jump when she felt like she could reach up and touch it.

“So, I guess there aren’t any people here?”

“None that I can detect.  They’re somewhere not too far though, I’d bet on it.”

In the distance the pair could hear the rumbling of thunder. 

“Sounds like a storm is brewing,” Chakotay said.  A sudden, strong wind whipped through the field and large, dark clouds began casting shadows overhead.  Naomi shivered.  “Here, take my jacket,” Chakotay said.  He stripped it off then hung it over the girl’s shoulders. 

“Thanks.”

“We need to find some shelter, there’s a nasty front coming in quick.”

Naomi nodded and pointed to an outcropping of trees visible in the distance. 

“Looks like our only choice,” Chakotay said.  With the tricorder out in front he led the way at a brisk pace. 

Focused on their path toward the safety of the trees, and distracted by the sounds and smells of the approaching weather, he neglected to notice another danger approaching them quickly from the rear.  Naomi, however, heard the rustling of grasses behind her. 

“Chakotay,” she said, slowing her movements.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think there’s something behind me.”

A crack of lightning deafened and partially blinded Chakotay.  When he turned around, the girl was gone. 

“Naomi!” Chakotay shouted as loud as he could.  Harsh streaks of lightning cracked across the sky and rain began to pour with an unrelenting yield.  To his left, Chakotay could see the girl’s blond hair bobbing up and down.  She was sprinting away from him as full speed. 

Naomi continued to run, she didn’t want to be so far from Chakotay - so far from the only protection she had known for the last days - but she had little choice.  The animal was gaining on her, she could hear it snarling in between the beating rain and claps of thunder.  She threw a glance over her shoulder and with a flash of pink light she saw brightness reflected in fangs, felt the heat of the animal as it drew ever nearer, smelled the rotting breath as it overpowered the cleansing showers.  She could no longer hear the shouts of her one and only protector. 

And then, with a final flash of lightning she was falling, stumbling.  The ground beneath her was no longer soft and yielding as she impacted it, but hard and gritty.  It abraded her palms and tore a hole in her leggings.  Naomi threw herself forward in a desperate crawl, unable to right herself as she braced for the attack.  But it never came.

Still in the dark, she slowly regained her senses and the world spun into rightness around her.  The animal was no longer behind her.  She picked herself up onto her knees and sunk her head into her hand and groaned.  “Not again.” 

* * *

Pounding rain accosted Chakotay from every angle making it impossible for him to see.  Lightning cracked and revealed a fleeting kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.  Through those fireworks, he imagined he could see her form.  He held his head low and continued without slowing his pace across the field.  Desperately, he yelled her name until his voice grew hoarse.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the storm blew out.  Nature took on a different sound.  He delayed the few remaining steps that would take him to the spot where he believed she had disappeared.  Blood rushed through his ears and reverberated through his own heavy breathing…. or was it panting?  Meticulously placed rumbles of thunder continued to roll out….or were they growls?  Leaded drops of water finished their descent from the sky and thudded to the ground… or were they footfalls? 

Every instinct within him screamed.  And then he saw it – a wolf - hunched low and stalking newfound prey.  The moment he met the animal’s eyes he knew it was too late. 

In one swift move, Chakotay retrieved the phaser from his belt and swung it around in time to catch the jowls of the animal square and hard.  A blast of untargeted energy soared off into the sky.  The wolf recoiled with a snarl, angrier than before and attacked again while its prey tried to regain his footing on the slippery grass.  The animal quickly brought the large man to the ground with a bite into the meat of his upper arm.  The phaser found its release and splatted into the mud.  Tearing at its next meal, the animal was rewarded with a howl of pain and the taste of blood. 

Fighting for leverage, Chakotay managed to swing his good fist into the side of his attacker’s skull.  He socked it with everything he had.  The canine released briefly, just long enough for Chakotay to seize the mud-soaked phaser.  This time, he didn’t miss his target and the animal fell from mid-lunge to the ground with a wet, heavy thud.

Chakotay collapsed to the earth gripping his torn, throbbing arm tight around his chest.  He grabbed for the bottom of his tunic and slung it up over the wound, applying as much pressure as he could muster with one shaky hand.  Splayed in the grass he rolled himself onto the injury, cheek in the sopping muck, he breathed in carefully and squinted. 

“Naomi….” he whispered. 

And then everything went dark.

* * *

Naomi could hear voices from her spot in what appeared to be the middle of a sidewalk.  She quickly gathered herself, righted the pack on her back, and kept her head low as she moved.  Water continued to drip off of her face and down her clothes.  Squat brick and stone buildings were all around her and she realized she was in the middle of a small city.  It was dim in the street between the flame-lit lampposts at dusk and she was glad for it.

She walked briskly away from the direction of voices until she came to a side alley not more than twenty-five paces from where she had been so unceremoniously deposited minutes before.  Her eyes darted around, scanning for people or other dangers.  Quietly, she ducked out of sight.  She looked up, a partial canopy two stories above would provide shelter if there should be more foul weather.  Naomi was still sopping wet from her experience in the field, but at least it was warmer now.  She took a moment to wring out her hair and noted that there were no doorways along the narrow side-street.  The open end provided an additional mode of escape should she need a way out.

Travelling to the middle, out of the light of the lamps, Naomi sat down on the hard cobblestones.  She put the backpack on the ground and sat against it, resting her head against the bricks.  Later in the evening, when the adrenaline would wear off, she would find that the pack made a sorry pillow.  It was hard and lumpy from a few remaining pieces of fruit and her water bottle, but she didn’t mind.  It was better than sleeping on bare stone.

Naomi was surprised to find - as she peeked through a rip in the canopy at the twinkling stars - that she wasn’t nearly as afraid as she might have been.  She was alone.  But she remembered what Chakotay had said.  He promised he would do whatever he had to, to get her home.  The strength of his words gave her courage.  If he had faith, then she would too. 

She also remembered something else that he had told her.  _‘I am scared when the people I care about are in danger._ _’_

In that moment, she hoped he wasn’t scared for her.

 


	6. Chapter 6

_Pop.  Bang.  Fiszzzzzsssss_ _….BOOM!  Pop. Pop. Pop._

_Awakening into a fog, Chakotay looked around._

_His ears were the first of his senses to perceive his surroundings.  The bursting of small munitions and deeper bellows of cannon fodder rang out in echoes against the hillsides.  From his perspective against the tree line he could see troops of opposing soldiers coming into view - advancing toward each other over opposing hills._

_In the center of the field of vividly painted wildflowers he could make out three figures, a tall, built man - much like himself; a slighter framed person and a much smaller individual with long hair.  Even from his distance, it was unmistakable that they were confused_ _– out of place - looking around with fervor.  When the girl swung toward him, a glint reflected off of her chest with the bright sunlight._

_Chakotay tried to stand, but he was stuck, legs unresponsive to his commands.  He tried calling out, but found he had no voice.  He listened as the gunfire grew louder, smoke from the primitive firearms laid down in a curtain over the pristine landscape.  That landscape was about to become a battlefield, he realized._

_The figures of the man and child began to run but it was a futile effort.   The advancing parties and their munitions fire stopped them before they could make it more than a hundred strides.  Gunned down, they fell._

_The middle-sized person, which he now recognized as a woman, hit the ground as well, but she began to crawl with an arm outstretched.  He tried to pull himself away, to go to her, but he still could not move.  After travelling about twenty meters, the woman vanished.  And his world too, went grey once more._

* * *

With a gasp, Chakotay sucked in muddy water through his mouth.  Coughing, gagging, he spat it out and rolled onto his back.  Dull pain and a tingling numbness washed over him as his eyes opened to blinding sunlight.  He groaned and carefully pulled himself to his knees. The tall grasses were heavy with moisture and sagged lowly all around.  Memories, both real and hallucinated, came washing over him and threatened to floor him once again. 

He remembered an attack.  The current state of his left arm confirmed this, as did the insect-covered corpse of an animal that laid next to him.  It had already begun to be picked clean by whatever carnivorous birds claimed this area.  If his wound hadn’t been concealed against the ground during the night he might have awakened to being picked at as well.

_Naomi._

Adrenaline surged through him once again.  He looked around the field but couldn’t see anything to indicate that the girl was nearby.  He breathed out slowly as if to test the air.  Where – or when - she was, he could only guess.  Chakotay reached for the tricorder from his belt and realized that he still had a phaser in his grip.  He swapped the two. 

And then he remembered something else.  A battle.  Gunfire.  Smoke.  What was that?  A dream?  It was so vivid.  He shook off the hazy memory, if that’s what it was, and opened the device. 

The instrument beeped furiously. 

Chroniton radiation, and loads of it.  Naomi must have passed through another gateway, just as he had suspected.  And he - without a chroniton stone - would be unable to go after her.  To further complicate matters, he wasn’t exactly sure which gateway she had gone through.  There seemed to be several in the nearby area.

Chakotay stood on unsteady legs and did his best to ignore the sticky-hot-stabbing sensation coming from his torn arm.  Now well above the height of the grass, Chakotay saw his jacket lying about ten meters to his left. He walked to it, and though it was sopping wet, he used it to wrap his wounded arm.  His fresh blood mixed with the stains left from when he had attended to Kathryn as she lay dying.  He was frustrated and angered to find himself in the same predicament as she had been.  

He tagged the jacket’s location in his tricorder.  A few meters past where he had found it was another gateway.  He had to assume this was the one Naomi escaped through.

_But what was that dream?_ he wondered, as hazy images flooded his mind.  The landscape around him looked so very much like the one from his hallucination.  Hills on opposing sides of a pristine lowland field, dense forest to his back.  It was the same size too.  And, if his perspective was correct, he wasn’t far from where he had seen the figures fall. 

Tricorder held out in front, he began to stumble toward the center of the plain.  More radiation indicated the presence of another gateway.  Not surprising in itself, but he also registered chroniton particles coming from the ground.  Then he realized, it was the same reading as from the stones Naomi had gathered. 

Chakotay stood on top of the place where his tricorder recorded the highest level and then fell unceremoniously to kneel in the soft, mushy earth.  Pieces of a jagged puzzle began to fall into place.  The man, woman and child he had seen.  They were Naomi, Kathryn and himself - hazy after-images of a separate timeline. 

He set his tricorder aside and plunged his good hand into the grass.  Pulling at the weeds, he gouged root-filled chunks out of the ground.  Handfuls of thick muddy soil followed.  After about ten scoops, he felt something hard.  Chakotay dug with an increased pace.  Soon, his efforts revealed a boot.  His boot.  Partially decomposed and cracked, marred from what must have been decades in the soil, but it was unmistakably his. 

He closed his eyes briefly, conjuring the image in his dream as he tried to remember how the bodies had fallen. He crawled forward on his knees, just to the left of where this man’s head would be.  He plunged a hand down again and came up with more muck.  Five scoops later, he found her.  Around her neck was an iridescent marble on a thin, gut string.

* * *

Naomi woke to the sound of clatter in the street.  It was morning.  Sunlight streamed through the holes in the canopy above.  She righted herself quickly and pressed her back along the wall of the alley.  Women pushing wooden carts shouted out words she didn’t recognize.  She slid carefully to the end of the backstreet to get a better look. 

Other individuals soon came out of the woodwork from doorways and hidden passages.  Some ran at the women from the end of the street.  All of them were waving slips of paper. 

And then the smell hit her.  Food.  Yeasty, sweet smelling breads.  A sharp scent of an alien spice she didn’t recognize.  Her stomach growled loudly.  Oh, how she wished she could run out and have just a single bite of anything from the carts.  She was so very tempted to start shamelessly begging for food.  Certainly someone would have pity on her, she was a child, after all.

But, she remembered what Chakotay had told her.  She couldn’t interfere.  And she certainly didn’t blend in.  Furthermore, without him she had no protection if any of those people wished her harm like those horrible men in the village. 

Naomi slunked back into the alleyway and rooted through her pack.  One of the fruits she carried had grown overripe in the bag and oozed sticky juice on most everything else.  It has a pungent, bitter smell.  She had to eat that first, conserve the rest, she realized.  So, she closed her eyes and held her nose and she swallowed down the stringy chunks, all the while imagining that they were spoonfuls of her mother’s apple pie.


	7. Chapter 7

When Naomi had finished her breakfast of fruit and drank the last sips of water from her bottle, she decided it was time to make a plan.  Commander Chakotay would come for her, of that she was certain.  She couldn’t travel too far from her original location for fear of him being unable to find her.  Her excitement at finding a tricorder in her pack, even though it had been covered in juice, was short lived as it no longer seemed to be functioning correctly.  Without a working device, she had to be careful not to stumble into another gateway. 

With nothing else to do, Naomi retrieved the small sketchpad and pencil from her bag.  She was about to put pen to paper, in an attempt to record the events that had brought her this far, when she heard a familiar voice.

“Naomi.”

The girl jumped to her feet and ran toward the end of the alley.  “Chakotay!” she shouted, and then covered her mouth for fear of attracting attention.  She hugged his torso with all of her might. 

“Are you okay?” Chakotay asked.  He stumbled a few steps into the alley and leaned against the wall.  Naomi was so overjoyed at his presence she neglected to notice how very badly he looked.

“I’m fine, I’m so glad you found me.”

“So am I,” Chakotay replied.  A wave of nausea and dizziness overtook him and he slid down along the jagged wall.

“You’re hurt,” Naomi realized with a catch in her throat.

Chakotay nodded.  “Yes.  But I’ll be okay.  We have to hurry.  According to the Captain’s countdown we only have an hour before she leaves and this whole mess gets a lot more complicated.”

“You need water or something,” she said eyeing him warily.  “I just drank the last of my bottle.  But….wait here.”

The girl ran to the end of the alley and disappeared around the corner.  Chakotay took a moment to steady his breathing and re-evaluate his arm.  He was, in fact, very badly injured.  He had lost a lot of blood through the night, was certainly in mild shock and the heat emanating from the wound indicated that infection was setting in.  He had to stay strong, he knew.  Just a little further and they would be home.

“Here,” Naomi said, returning with the bottle outstretched to him.  “I got it from a rain barrel. It’s not super clean, but it’ll have to do.”

“Thanks,” Chakotay replied and he drank it down without hesitation.

* * *

After a brief respite, Chakotay summoned the strength to continue their search for the underground gateway.  The tricorder had led them to a few dead-ends, on account of buildings being in the way, but after about fifteen minutes they stumbled rather unceremoniously onto the entrance of an underground rail system.  As much as Chakotay was loathe to be out amongst the masses, he realized he had no choice.  Naomi pulled her hair around to cover her forehead and briskly they followed a steady stream of people down a set of concrete steps into the ground.

Busy travelers bustled past, knocking them from side to side.  With each swipe Chakotay felt himself growing weaker.  Once or twice Naomi was brushed away from his side resulting in surges of adrenaline through both of them. 

At the bottom of the staircase, the clattering of heavy trains on antiquated tracks could be heard.  Squeaking brakes and incandescent bulbs rounded out the experience.  Another sudden wave of anxiety hit Chakotay in the chest.  If this tunnel didn’t travel exactly where they needed it to, then they would be out of luck.  He offered up a silent plea and took Naomi off to the side of the loading platform. 

He covertly consulted his tricorder.  “We need to head down the rails,” he told her.  “We’re going to have to move quickly, just in case there’s more than one engine that travels this line.

Naomi nodded in understanding and retrieved the flashlight from her pack.  Careful to be sure no one was paying attention – which they weren’t because everyone here was in a hurry – they slid down the platform and onto the track. 

Naomi lit their way in front and walked without issue down the uneven path of the rail.  She gazed upward momentarily and saw that the boards which held the ceiling up were lined with long metal braces.  The light from her torch cast odd shadows all around. 

From behind, Naomi heard a groan and a thud.  She turned to see the Commander lying face down on the concrete between the tracks.

“Chakotay!” she shouted, running back to him.  She shook him on the shoulders. 

He groaned and vomited up the rainwater onto the floor in front of her. 

“You have to get up!” she demanded.  “You can’t lay here, we’ll be hit!”

Naomi used all of her might to roll the much larger man onto his side.  His eyes were beginning to glass over. 

“No!  No no no no no!  You can’t do this to me Chakotay, you have to get me home!” she shouted, shaking him with all of her might.  “You promised!  You can’t break a promise to a little girl!”  Thinking quickly, she retrieved the water bottle from her bag, opened it, and poured the remainder of its contents onto his face. 

The cold water assailed Chakotay’s senses and snapped him back. 

Naomi grabbed him by his good arm and pulled.  “Up!  Now, Commander.  That’s an order,” she barked.  Then she paused.  A low rumbling began to shake the iron rail beneath her feet, her voice grew more frantic.  “There’s a train coming, you have to move now!”

Chakotay summoned all of his strength and drew himself to his knees, in the fog of his semi-consciousness all he really knew was that he couldn’t allow the girl to be hit.  Naomi swung her flashlight around and found a small nook about ten meters ahead and to the right.  “We can rest in there,” she said.  “Move.”

Chakotay used the side wall to pull himself back up.  Stumbling, she helped to keep him upright until he was able to collapse again in the safety of the crevice.

“You have to take this and go,” Chakotay said, holding the tricorder out to her. 

“What?” she asked, dumbfounded and staring at the device as if she had never seen it before.

“The gateway is only another thirty meters from here,” he informed her quietly.  “I’ll never make it that far.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she insisted.  “I’d rather save you then get home.”

Chakotay realized in that instant just how much the girl had learned about self-sacrifice from her village on Voyager.

“Naomi, I can’t feel my legs.  I can’t walk.  I’m not going to make it.”

“Then I’ll go back to the town for help.”

Chakotay looked at the countdown timer.  “Eight minutes before Kathryn leaves to find us.  After that everything gets more complicated.”  He weakly shook the device at her and shuddered on an intake of breath.  “Go.”

At that moment a blinding light assailed them from around the bend.  The concussion from the train reverberated through the walls and Naomi felt as if the whole tunnel would collapse on top of them.  Another minute and it had passed by.

When Naomi looked back down at the Commander, his eyes were closed.

She took the tricorder from his outstretched hand as it laid limp on the floor and put a palm on his forehead.  “I’ll come back for you,” she promised.  Then she wiped the tears from her eyes.  “Please, don’t die.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Mom!”

Naomi emerged from the gateway straight into a full sprint.  Before her was quite possibly the most welcome sight she had ever seen.  The dull, dirty cave from which her journey began was now filled with Starfleet-uniformed officers and equipment.

“Naomi!” Samantha cried, she stooped low and opened her arms.  The girl ran to her and the others breathed a sigh of relief.  “Baby, is it really you?” Samantha asked in awe, pulling away to examine her child.  Tom Paris moved in to scan the girl for injuries then quickly gave her mother a reassuring nod.

 Naomi broke free of her mother’s grasp and quickly turned to Captain Janeway.  The girl realized she arrived just in time, as the Captain was obviously preparing to enter the portal momentarily.

“Captain, we have to go back!” the girl demanded.  She grabbed Janeway by the arm and started to pull. 

“Naomi, wait.” Janeway said calmly.  “Where’s Commander Chakotay?”

“He’s in the future.  I mean, he’s through one of those chroniton gateways.  We have to find the right one and go back.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Samantha interjected with a mother’s protective tone.

Naomi ignored her and summoned the most composed voice she could, though it didn’t last long.  “Captain, if you don’t let me take you back, I mean, forward….I mean.  He’s going to die!”

Janeway swallowed back the lump of fear that was rising in her throat.  “Stay calm Naomi, tell me what you know.”

“No!  We have to go now!  Aren’t you listening to me? He’s dying!” she repeated with a frantic shout.

“Okay, okay.  Please Naomi, try to stay calm.  You said we have to get to Chakotay, how exactly do we do that?”

Naomi shoved her tricorder into the Captain’s hands.  “We have to find the gateway that matches this signature,” she said pointing to an indicator on the display.  “We go through it, and I can lead you to where I left the Commander.  Then, we have to go back to the gateway that matches this signature,” and she pointed to another indicator.  “But that’s easy, I already know where it is.”

“Get me a medkit,” Janeway ordered to no one in particular, and one was placed in her hand. 

“Naomi, I’ll go after the Commander, but I need you to wait here with your mother.”

Naomi shook her head fiercely.  “No.  You won’t be able to find him without me.  Not in time.  Please, Captain Janeway, I have to go with you.  He saved my life a dozen times.  I have to help him.”

Janeway looked to Samantha.  The mother regarded her newly-returned daughter, saw the panic and determination in her eyes, and then she nodded her head.  After all he had clearly done to keep her daughter safe, she owed the Commander this much. 

“The gateway should be to the north, follow me,” Naomi said, taking the tricorder back from the Captain.  “You’re going to have to stay close to me and hold my hand when we go through.” 

“Wait, Naomi, you said Chakotay is injured.  Can he walk?”

Naomi shook her head.  “No.  He’s unconscious.”

“Then I’m going to need more help, I can’t carry or drag him,” Janeway looked to Tuvok who began to sidle up to them.

“I don’t know how many people can go through at once,” Naomi said, and she retrieved the stone of the necklace from under her shirt.  “I don’t know if it matters, but I only have one marble.”

“Marble?”  Janeway asked, the pieces falling together, then she tapped her commbadge.  “Janeway to the Doctor, transport to my location immediately.”

Within moments the Doctor appeared.  “No time to explain I’m afraid,” she said, turning him by the arm.  She pushed a button on his mobile emitter and with a few disappearing words of protest he returned to his emitter.  Janeway gripped the unit in the palm of her hand. 

“Lead on,” she directed Naomi.

* * *

It took longer than Naomi had hoped to find the gateway that would return her to Chakotay’s location.  It was indeed to the north of the cave and in the middle of the new-growth, brush-filled forest.  The tricorder beeped wildly and Naomi stopped short.  She took the Captain’s hand.  “Stay close,” Naomi ordered.

A disorienting wave of nausea hit the Captain.  The next thing she heard was Naomi’s voice.  “You get used to it after a while.  Come on.”

Janeway looked to the ground beneath her feet.  Cobblestone roads and citizens of a race she’d never seen before were all around.  _Where did all of these people come from?_ she wondered.  “Keep your head down,” Naomi advised softly. 

Naomi deftly wove in and out of the bodies, crossed the street and went down a busy side street.  She led the Captain down a set of stairs to the underground railway.  Janeway had so many questions but couldn’t spare the time to ask them as the girl pulled her along.  At the bottom of the tunnel steps, the pair were met with the incandescent glow of gas-lit candelabras. 

“He’s this way,” Naomi said, and she took them down another set of corridors. The atmosphere was dank and so heavy with moisture that Janeway felt as if she could wring the water out of the air with her hands.  By this time - and since there were no more people around to witness - Janeway had her tricorder out in front and was scanning for human lifesigns.  She was relieved to find one, although it was extremely weak, straight ahead. 

“We have to walk quickly on the rails,” Naomi told her, running down the center lane with Janeway on her heels.

“Chakotay!” Naomi shouted as she pulled the Captain to the side of the tunnel.  Her flashlight illuminated the nook where she had left the Commander.  Janeway inhaled with a gasp at the sight of him and put her arm back to keep Naomi from getting too close. 

She quickly activated the Doctor and knelt down beside her first officer.  Chakotay was unconscious - blood caked on his clothes and he was so pale.  His breath was labored, uneven and very shallow.

The Doctor took the medkit and began his assessment.  A few hypospray hisses and tricorder beeps and a “we need to get him back to the ship immediately” were heard by Janeway’s ears but she could barely process them. 

Janeway smoothed a hand across Chaktoay’s clammy forehead.  “How do we get back?” she asked suddenly, turning to Naomi.

“It’s not far,” the girl replied.  “Is he going to make it?”

The Doctor’s face was grim.  “We need to go quickly.”

Janeway and the Doctor moved in tandem to each take one side of his body.  Together, they dragged him from the swampy corner.  Janeway groaned under the dead-weight.

“This way,” Naomi ordered, leading them down the tunnel, weaving on the broken concrete.  In the distance she could hear a rumbling.  “There’s a train coming, we have to hurry,” Naomi urged. 

The two crutches picked up their pace.  Naomi’s flashlight illuminated the tracks in front and her tricorder began to ping.  “Just a little further,” she confirmed.  Then, she stopped short. 

“It’s right here,” she said, waving the tricorder.  “Chakotay has a marble,” Naomi said.  “Stay with him and you’ll get through.”

“Wait, Naomi,” Janeway said suddenly.  “Just in case, come over here and hold onto the Doctor’s hand. 

Naomi did as she was told.  The rumbling of the oncoming train grew closer and Janeway realized if this didn’t work, they were all going to be spread out like jam on toast.  “Now,” she ordered.

They all moved as one.


	9. Epilogue

As the black curtain of unconsciousness slowly morphed into fringes of grey and light, Chakotay was made vaguely aware of his own breathing.  A familiar face - fuzzy around the edges - was smiling at him.  Without warning, his mind won the race against his body and slammed him forward into reality.

“Naomi!” Chakotay hissed and every muscle in his body contracted to throw him upward.

“Easy there,” Kathryn replied, placing a firm hand on his chest.  He relinquished and laid back down only after she confirmed, “Naomi’s fine.  She’s with her mother.”

Chakotay let out a deep sigh of relief. Then he looked into his captain’s eyes. Other droplets of reality seeped and soaked through, like water into a sponge.  Spotty events became clear and regaled him of a strange story.

“Kathryn.  You’re okay?”

She furrowed her brow slightly.  “I’m fine.”

He let out another deep sigh. “Good.”

“You’re going to be alright too, though you gave us a bit of a scare,” she told him.  “I had an interesting little debrief with Naomi.  She had quite a story to tell.”

“I bet she did.”  He tentatively touched his previously injured arm and was grateful to find it wasn’t even the least bit tender, though perhaps still a bit stiff.

“I’m not sure how much of it to believe,” Kathryn said looking into his brown eyes, searching for answers.

“Every word,” he confirmed, meeting her gaze.  “You should believe every word.”

Kathryn nodded with a slight smile.  “We’ll be in orbit for a few more days.  When you’re up to it, you might want to take a look at the activity on the surface.”

He furrowed his brow.  “Activity?”

“There’s a civilization down there Chakotay.  Not far at all from the cave you were exploring.”

“But -”

“I know,” she said holding up a hand.  “The consensus seems to be that Naomi gifted a few of those chroniton marbles when you travelled back in time.  The natives carrying them were unwittingly taken a couple thousand years past the moon-strike.  They survived, and they remembered you and Naomi in modified sketches in the cave.  They’re approaching what we would consider medieval times.”

“The children…that man who called Naomi a savoir.”  Chakotay whispered.  He found himself without the wherewithal to explain further.   “So much for the Prime Directive.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.  I’m not about to condemn the career of an officer that hasn’t yet made it out of grammar school.”  Kathryn winked.  “Besides, you’re responsible for saving an entire culture that would have otherwise been wiped out of existence.  It’s amazing when you think about it.”

“This explains more than a few things.”

“Oh?”

“The war, the villages, the underground rail system.” 

“I’d say you’ve taught a lesson in cultural evolution that our young crewman won’t soon forget.”

Chakotay shook his head.  “More than just evolution, Kathryn.  That girl saw some things she shouldn’t have had to see.”

“She’s already experienced a lot more than most her age.  She’ll have you and the rest of us to help her make sense of things,” she confirmed gently.

His face turned abruptly serious.  “There were a few times down there, I thought I wasn’t going to get her home.”

“But you did.”

“Barely.  Thank goodness, I had some help,” he said and looked her in the eye.

Kathryn gave him an awkward smile. “So I’ve heard.  Apparently I’ve been doing things again that I don’t remember.”

“I still don't understand how you were able to find us.”

She shook her head.  “I'm not entirely certain myself. I would guess that when I finally caught up with you and was able to scan Naomi's necklace I reset the frequency of my emitter to match yours.  Stumbling on you as I did was probably nothing more than dumb luck.”

Chakotay looked at her soft eyes and drew his gaze down to where her wound had been.  She had all but died in front of him, hadn’t she?  “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, leaving you behind,” he confessed.

“Then what Naomi said _was_ true?”

“I told you.  Believe every word she said.”

Kathryn bit her lip.  “In that case…” she said, taking Chakotay’s hand in her own.  She looked down and stroked a gentle thumb over his tanned flesh.  Then she lifted her eyes to his.  “I love you too.  And I’m glad you’re going to be okay.”

He closed his eyes briefly allowing himself to relish in the moment.

“Get some rest Chakotay.  There are more adventures in store for us all.”

* * *

 

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